A swift-moving and cinematic thriller.
A former prisoner must team up with a police investigator to solve the mystery of his friend’s abduction in this crime novel.
A man called Monster-Boy, “a near giant with a face like a child” and “a mouthful of misshapen teeth,” hates ex-con James Beck—so much so that he installs a closed-circuit TV camera to watch Beck’s home in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn; abducts his friend Manny Guzman; and taunts him with graphic images of violence and cryptic messages via text. As Beck tries to uncover the true identity of his enemy, he crosses paths with New York City cop Dianne Brennan, who’s investigating the second of two vicious homicides. In this third installment of the James Beck mystery series, Clarkson includes vivid descriptions of violence as well as strong language, but it never seems gratuitous given the author’s fidelity to the hard-boiled crime genre and the language of prison culture. Beck went to prison for manslaughter because of his involvement in a bar fight that led to a police officer’s death, and his past provides the novel’s core secrets. Chapters alternate between Monster-Boy’s machinations, Beck and his friends’ attempt to locate Manny, and Brennan’s pursuit of Beck to solve her two homicides; in the best hard-boiled tradition, the cops are always one step behind the amateur-detective protagonist. Clarkson includes some scenes of lighthearted banter, such as the exchange between Brennan and another cop about breakfast: “ ‘What did you get?’ ‘Some sort of egg and muffin thing. With bacon.’ ‘Really?’…‘Don’t get too excited. They’re microwaved.’ ” He also shows himself to be well versed in weaponry, as when a character loads “six Winchester PDX1 12-gauge defender shells into the Remington.” Such touches of realism will satisfy genre aficionados.
A swift-moving and cinematic thriller.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9992155-9-3
Page Count: 434
Publisher: John Clarkson Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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